Volume 26 : Articles

Silver Reef, Utah—excavation and archival re­search Director, Dr. Robert Schuyler (American Histor­ical Archaeology Section, University Museum) Sponsor, University Museum As part of a long-term archaeological study (1981-1988) of the historic American West, The University Museum is carrying out fieldwork at the site of Silver Reef, a short-lived mining town in the southwestern corner of Utah. […]

Throughout the islands of Indonesia a house is more than a home. Traditionally, each of the scores of Indonesian ethnic groups had a distinctive architectural standard for every house built by a member of the group, which constituted an active expression of that group’s ethnic identity. The design of a house often had deep symbolic […]

The Codification of Minangkabau Worldview

By: Peggy R. Sanday and Suwati Kartiwa

One of the prominent Indonesian ethnic groups, the Minangkabau constitute 3% of the entire Indonesian population and one-quarter of the Sumatran population. The Minang­kabau pride themselves on their matrilineal social system, believing this to provide the core of their customary law and the basis for their social identity. Known also for their lit­erary flair, practicality, […]

A Contemporary Polynesian Society

By: Bill Donner

Sikaiana is located about 90 miles east of Malaita Island in the Solomon Islands (see Fig. 2). It consists of four separate islets sur­rounded by a coral reef about 6 miles across. Most people reside on the largest island, Hale, at the eastern end of the reef (Fig. 3). At present, Sikaiana has a resident […]

House Plans and Cult Center

By: Barbara J. Hayden

Introduction The best-known period of Cretan prehistory is the Minoan Neopalatial or Late Minoan (LM) I period, encompassing approximately one hundred years from the mid-16th century B.C. to the destruction of most of the Minoan palace centers and many towns in the mid-15th century (ca. 1550-1450 B.C.; see Fig. 2). Exca­vations in Crete during this […]

Museum Briefs

By: Jay Schwartz and George Brooks and John Herrmann

Egypt is famous for its royal tombs and pyramids, but we know surprisingly little about the ceremonial and political activities of Egypt’s ancient kings, or about their daily lives. In fact, very few royal palaces have been excavated: located on the alluvial plain of the Nile, most have disappeared — swallowed by rising mud, buried […]

From the Seleucids to the Earliest Caliphs

By: Daniel T. Potts

The course of Near Eastern archaeology, as we are seeing very vividly today, is highly sus­ceptible to the winds of political change. Iran and Afghanistan, to name but two examples, are lands in which it is at present impossible for western archaeologists to work. Yet this trend is hardly new, and in the Arabian penin­sula […]

Painted Vases in the Shape of Birds

By: Mario A. Del Chiaro

Vases in the form of animals or birds (askoi; askos, singular) have a remarkably long history in Western and Far Eastern art. In ancient Greece, decorated vases shaped as birds were produced as early as the Geometric period (9th-8th century B.C.), and in Italy during the Iron Age (10th-8th century B.C.) there are equally interesting […]

Irrigation and Cooperation in an Agricultural Society

By: Arjun Appadurai

Introduction The principal purpose of this paper is to decribe the social arrangement surrounding access to water from open-surface wells in a rural Indian setting. This description raises certain questions concerning the sociology of cooperation in a traditional agricultural society undergoing rapid economic and technical change. Some of these questions are briefly discussed in the […]

Inuit Beadwork in the Canadian Arctic

By: Bernadette Driscoll

The advent of European exploration introduced the brightly colored glass bead to the Inuit (Eskimo) seamstresses of the Cana­dian Arctic. Known in the eastern Arctic as sapangaq or ‘precious stone’ (Dorais 1983:52), the seedbead became a highly desired trade item and, when worn in quantity, was consid­ered a sign of prestige and wealth. In his […]